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Show 40 Maiqi Kamerath college of humanities With eight hundred fifty million users and one hundred billion cell-phone short messages (SMS) annually, China has become the world's biggest cell phone market and Chinese people are cultivating a "thumb culture." Political Cell-phone SMS is the most brilliant part of the culture. China's government adroitly guides and makes SMS become a method of fighting corruption, supervising government action, and im-proving the political atmosphere. They cooperate with the public and respond to political cell-phone SMS. Because of a political cell-phone SMS, Zhongfei Qin and his 40 friends were put in prison for 30 days by local government in what is now called the Pengshui Poem Case. The Pengshui Poem Case exposed former Pengshui County Government's leaders' corruption and local people's human rights problems and became the hallmark of human rights. "Striving to be a public servant (meaning: governmental official) I don't shy" and "Why does a good reputa-tion's vice-governor fall in love canvassing?", two cell-phone SMS about Tangtang Lee's dignified Canvass-ing Case exposed China's current incomplete political administrative system and the absence of an open, fair and transparent selection system for officials. With criticism, Tangtang Lee's sadly ridiculous image leaps off the paper. "Public is no longer from embarrassment to embarrassment, citizens are in progress. When will govern-ment progress?" This SMS casts doubt on the government's management abilities. Cell-phone SMS is folklore's transmutation. Folklore is a kind of Chinese traditional oral literature from the grass class. Both are similar in terms of content, structure pattern, rhetoric and aesthetics; they are only dif-ferent in their communicated pattern. Both critical political types have the same ideology and era charac-teristics. Folklore and political cell-phone SMS can measure a country's politics, enjoy popular support or go against the will of the people. Political cell-phone SMS is meaningful for Chinese thumb culture and foretells the beginning of a democratic China. CELL PHONE SMS AS CATALYST OF CULTURAL CHANGE: ON ANALYSIS OF THREE POLITICAL SMS CASES Maiqi Kamerath Department of Communication University of Utah UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ABSTRACTS |